I am an author, independent researcher and speaker exploring innovation, information technology trends and markets. I am also a co-author of the SOA Manifesto, which outlines the values and guiding principles of service orientation in business and IT. I also served on the program committee of the International SOA and Cloud Symposium series.
Much of my research work is in conjunction with Forbes Insights and Unisphere Research/ Information Today, Inc., covering topics such as cloud computing, digital transformation, enterprise mobility, and big data analytics. I am also a contributor to CBS interactive, authoring the ZDNet "Service Oriented" site.
In a previous life, I served as communications and research manager of the Administrative Management Society (AMS), an international professional association dedicated to advancing knowledge within the IT and business management fields. I am a graduate of Temple University.

Cloud Will Generate 14 Million Jobs By 2015: That's A Good Start

Cloud computing will potentially generate at least 14 million new jobs across the globe within the next three years. Moreover, these new jobs may likely be in many areas outside of IT.

Those findings come from new research conducted by IDC and sponsored by Microsoft Corp., looking at the economic benefits of cloud computing in the years ahead. A couple of months back, a Microsoft-underwritten study by the London School of Economics projected substantial job growth in two industries, smartphones and aerospace.

Fourteen million new jobs is a significant number to be sure, but when compared against the size of the global workforce (more than 3 billion), it’s in the neighborhood of half a percent, or a small drop in the bucket. And only 1.17 million of these jobs will be seen in North America. A majority of these jobs will be found in emerging markets — 10 million will arise in China, India and the Asia-Pacific region. This is mainly due to the immense size of these country’s workforces — 1.2 billion workers in China and India alone, the study report observes.

Still, it’s a good start. And any level of job creation is a good thing. Cloud is clearly a positive force, creating more opportunities than it takes away. As the study’s author, John Gantz, put it: “A common misperception is cloud computing is a job eliminator, but in truth it will be a job creator — a major one. And job growth will occur across continents and throughout organizations of all sizes because emerging markets, small cities and small businesses have the same access to cloud benefits as large enterprises or developed nations.”

A big question, of course, is what types of jobs will actually be created as a direct result of cloud. It’s natural to assume many will be IT — cloud developers, integration specialists, and so on. And there are many areas made possible by cloud formations. Recently, for example, TechNet, a consortium of tech business leaders, issued a report that estimated that the “App Economy” — the industry creating apps for smartphones and tablets — has already created 466,000 jobs in the United States alone.Many of these would be app software creators and developers. This is a career and entrepreneurship area that leverages cloud to make things happen.

But IDC points out that since jobs are being created as a result of increased business revenue from cloud, the jobs will be across the breadth of enterprises, in areas such as marketing, sales, finance and administration, production, and service. We may not have even imagined yet what job titles may emerge. And many non-IT people may have the cloud to thank, at least indirectly, for their opportunities. I’ll bet it will be more than 14 million that have career opportunities tied to the cloud.

IDC’s research also predicts revenues from cloud innovation could reach $1.1 trillion per year within the next 36 months. The analyst firm estimates that last year alone, IT cloud services helped organizations of all sizes and all vertical sectors around the world generate more than $400 billion in revenue and 1.5 million new jobs. In the next four years, the number of new jobs will surpass 8.8 million.

IDC’s approach was fairly rigorous, calculating including available country workforce, unemployment rates, GDP, IT spend by industry and company size, industry mix by country and city, technology infrastructure by country and city, regulatory environment, and other factors.

Not clear from the report is how much job creation will be tied to new, innovative startups that will be made possible because of the cloud. This is hard to predict, and government employment statistics always miss the possibilities new innovations bring to the scene. Remember, in the early 1990s, nobody predicted the dot-come boom about to hit, which helped fuel a full-employment economy for a few years. Nobody could have predicted startups such as Amazon.com or Google or Yahoo! So we don’t know exactly how far this new model of application delivery will take us.

And, tellingly, the study says there’s another entirely new dynamic — companies becoming cloud providers themselves. This may also turn bring many existing portions of workforces into the cloud economy as well. “Beyond this, and not measured in this study, is the use that cloud computing can be put to beyond mere capital cost avoidance,” the report observes. “Organizations large and small can host their own cloud services for their own customers.”

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Unemployment numbers are comprised of those that are in the job market for the past 30 days. It does not include those that have not been in the job market in the last 30 days: people who have given up looking; those that have gone off unemployment because it has run out. One solution to unemployment is High Speed Universities check it out

Cloud Will Generate 14 Million Jobs By 2015……….That’s a brave statement there McKendrick. I must also ask can we now while in formation structure anew the style workforce options and opportunities alternative than the way things have always been done. In the customer service industry everything is in strict documentation so that no matter how many times the caller (customer) calls back even though you are to strive for one call resolution the documentation is in the customer account. No matter who picks up the next call or chat the customer service has notes as to what actions have already been done to resolve any issues. What if we can generate a strong workforce in the strength of life as well as in the $. Continuous design jobs as a workforce that has family is allowed summers off with pay as the designs of the North American teachers workforce who are paid with summers off. Have those jobs be systematically transferred to the college students in mass numbers as already set apprenticeships and internships where applicable. The roles are switched before college and educational institutions return. The new revitalized America. It’s an idea :)

We’re already there, and moving rapidly toward further parsing of work into “microtasks” – and not just in programming. Think of getting an x-ray, where the images are scanned and sent to India, where the next available in a pool of radiologists picks it up for diagnosis.

The gains in efficiency (productivity) are manifest. But it also underscores the need to sever basic benefits, such as health care, from the employer. As we move further toward outsourcing work by the task and unit of production to a global pool of contractors who compete on price…the old paradigm of permanent employment with one company who provides, e.g., healthcare, is waning.

Conjoining healthcare with your employer is already a serious drain on American competitiveness. It burdens businesses with the cost (and costly administration) of health benefits, and it keeps our workers underemployed and less mobile.

Sure. This is the US government’s National Institute of Standards definition:

“Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”